Imprivata has announced the general availability of Imprivata Cortext™, the healthcare industry’s first free HIPAA compliant text messaging solution for Apple iPhone and Android smartphones as well as Web-based chat for nurses without smartphone access. Eighty-two hospitals have already enrolled in Cortext, including Beaufort Memorial Hospital, Memorial Healthcare and Sonoma Valley Hospital.

Imprivata Cortext is an iPhone, Android and Web-based application that uses its own secure cloud based architecture to send text and picture messages between care providers. The Cortext application uses a number of encryption technologies, both at rest and over the wire, to ensure information is sent and stored securely while delivering care providers a user experience that is as simple as their device’s native texting application.

Developed for the pace of clinical workflows, Cortext includes features like the ability to contact any care provider in the hospital directory and quickly send call back requests. Imprivata Cortext also enables timely care team collaboration by expediting both text and picture communication of patient information, including test results, discharge process, second opinions, prescription clarification and more, to support quick clinical decision-making while complying with HIPAA.

“I believe that Cortext not only satisfies the need for a HIPAA compliant text messaging system, but also facilitates prompt communication between physicians, nurses and pharmacists. We are no longer left waiting on the phone to speak to another physician, or worse, left with no response at all,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, Chief Medical Officer and a practicing Emergency Physician at Sonoma Valley. “The ‘envelope’ icon is an elegant solution to inform the sender that the message has been received and read. I look forward to deploying Cortex throughout our hospital.”

Text messaging among care providers has been on the rise according to a recent Spyglass report that revealed 42 percent of physicians are using personal Smartphones to text message colleagues and medical staff to support patient care activities. However as texting continues to increase, so do compliance concerns, according to Imprivata’s 2012 Text Messaging in Healthcare Survey that found an overwhelming majority (95.4%) of hospitals are concerned about HIPAA compliance and communicating protected health information (PHI) through the device’s native, unsecured standard short message service (SMS).

According to Barry Runyon, Research VP at Gartner, “Texting is the most widely used mobile application and presents real opportunities for Healthcare Delivery Organizations to enhance provider communications and engage patients. Gartner believes that mobile devices will increasingly become peer devices with desktop PCs, laptops and tablets and Healthcare Delivery Organizations will soon move toward a choice-oriented mobile management style that seeks to satisfy the needs of clinicians, without incurring excessive risk.”